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What do you like in a programming language?

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Posted 02-19-2009 at 12:55 AM by PatrickNew

As a hobby/educational project, I'm writing the specification and reference compiler for a programming language. Although education and experience are my primary motivators, I really want write a language that people would use.

So here's my question: What makes a programming language good? Specifically, I'm looking at a strongly, statically typed object-oriented language with some functional aspects, with templating tossed in.

Here's what I've got so far. They are in no particular order. Remember, this is just a wishlist, I'm not claiming to deliver all this by next month

Efficiency
- Allows for (but doesn't require) optimizations.
- Doesn't waste (note: 'waste', not 'use') CPU cycles.
- Doesn't waste (note: 'waste' not 'use') RAM.
Clarity
- Clean syntax.
- Intuitive semantics.
Safety
- Audited and tested implementation of standard libraries.
- Support for exceptions.
- Support for interfaces and their enforcement (in some incarnation or another).
Openness
- A liberally licensed reference compiler.
- A CPAN-like repository of code.
Bind-ability
- Ability to use extenral libraries.
- Ability to export libraries to other languages.
Feature Completeness
- Turing completeness (obviously).
- Extensive standardized libraries.
Extensibility
- Easy to create domain-specific sublanguages.
- Some mechanism for conditional compilation.
Scalability
- Full OO constructs.
- Package/Namespace system.
- Loadable modules where they are supported.
Portability
- To various OS's.
- To various CPU's.
Concurrency - Able
- Good support for threads.
- Good synchronization primitives.
- Good communication primitives.

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